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"Since I read somewhere that it's closed source, and there is no intent to port it to linux... I hope Exeem dies a firey death, as places like suprnova can easily be replaced.
Now if Exeem because opensource, and becomes availible for Linux... well... another matter entirely."

Only on Slashdot would nonsense like this get moderated up. Please explain what is insightful about this? He proclaims he read something that he cannot backup with a source and he shows that he is a zealot and hopes that all non

Well, I dunno about the "insightful" either, but I for one would never use a closed-source p2p client.

It's really just a matter of safety (and paranoia): only with opensource clients I can be relatively sure that the client won't rat out on me or install malware of various sorts. Honor among thieves (or pirates:)) is nothing I'll trust on...

So you look at every line of code for each client application you run to verfiy that you are safe and dont need to be paranoid?

And with each update you go through each line and verfiy that its safe?

I haven't read the proof of Fermat's last theorem. Nevertheless, I think it's probably true, because:

I know that all the details are available for anyone to examine.

I know that very smart people have given the proof careful critical readings.

Every time I've personally read the proof of a mathematical result that has stood such tests, I've found it to be sound.

For similar reasons, I also believe that the structure of DNA is what my chemistry teachers told me it is, even though I haven't personally performed the necessary experiments.

*Most* of the things I'm asked to believe on a daily basis are things I've never personally verified. I decide how much faith I should have in them partly by thinking about the processes by which they were arrived at.

Not that I have *that* much faith in the process that produces bittorrent. But still, it's important to realize that there are ways you can get assurances from the open source process without personally verifying every line.

The ultimate P2P service would be Freenet 1.x, scheduled to be released sometime after the last atom of hydrogen has been consumed by the last star and the remaining ashes frozen solid.

Beneath the starless sky, on the frozen landfill that was once Earth, a feeble glow suddenly appears. It comes from a long-dead display, which slowly comes to something resembling life. For a while it flickers like a candle in the wind, then stabilizes into a steady glow. The last surviving human is drawn to it, and for a moment he just stares, not sure if he should believe his own eyes - Freenet 1.0 actually found the key he was searching for !.

Then, suddenly, he realizes - the "Index of not-yet-inserted keys" actually found what he was searching for ! Exited, he starts reading, and soon he knows how to reverse entropy. He throws his head back and laughs. And so it begins again...

Greetings everybody,
As you have probably noticed, we have often had downtimes. This was because it was so hard to keep this site up!
But now we are sorry to inform you all, that SuprNova is closing down for good in the way that we all know it.
We do not know if SuprNova is going to return, but it is certainly not going to be hosting any more torrent links.
We are very sorry for this, but there was no other way, we have tried everything.
Thank you all that helped us, by donating mirrors or something else, by uploading and seeding files, by helping people out on IRC and on forum, by spreading the word about SuprNova.org.
It is a sad day for all of us!
Please visit SuprNova.org every once in a while to get the latest news on what is happening and if there is anything new to report on.
As we wish to maintain the nice comunity that we created, we are keppig forums and irc servers open.
Thank you all and Goodbye!
sloncek & the rest of the SuprNova Team

Is it possible they brought their web pages down on purpose in order to create a little hype and maybe some panic amongst Torrent users. Then in a week or two they will release that new P2P file sharing program the have had in beta for a while? Seems like a good enough marketing campaign as a lot of Torrent users are students, or kids, and Slashdot may not be their source of information, though this story did find itself on the front page.

You'll read that they have both given up and shut their doors to torrent hosting. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but when two of the biggest torrent link sites go down very close in time to one another, I'm guessing there was a sweep of cease and decist letters. Guess its true about the "The bigger they are" hypothesis

Taken from here [dslreports.com] -------AT LAST!I've got a chance to reply to some of these rumours and wild speculation!(YES - this is going to be one of the Puppy's long boring posts,but if you don't read it all, don't bother replying - NO CRIB NOTES AVAILABLE)

Firstly, I have to say,I am extremely dissapointed with the response from some of the members of the TB community.Scare-mongering and spreading rumours is not the most helpful thing to do in a situation like this!I know everyone is unhappy about it, but don't burn your bridges with insults or by playing the blame game!

Secondly,I am extremely delighted with the reponse form some of the members of the TB community.Members like DeeJee, and Warlok, who are trying to keep us all together,to get the correct information out. There are probably more that I don't know about yet....and all those working behind the scenes.... Thanks guys

OK lets get down to it.A few facts:-- I am extremely sad to report, that I have just found out that, TB, as we know it, is DEAD.- The full reason why Rb choose to close down is still not yet known- Rb was "on holiday" when the site went down, and is in no position to put it back up again,or explain anything, until he gets back- There was a Ddos attack - After the site went down!

One more fact:-Nobody, REPEAT, nobody, except Redbeard knows what Redbeard is planning to do.

Keep watching torrentbits.org for a statement.It's the ONLY place to get the full facts

Now talking in #suprnova.org
Topic is 'SuprNova is from today on DOWN. It will not be returning in any way that we know it now. We are very sorry for this, but it is not possible any other way. Thank you all for all your help! SuprNova crew '
* Set by sloncek on Sun Dec 19 16:08:10

I knew it was serious as sloncek is the owner of SN and doesn't fool about with the topics much (unless its April 1st).

The thing that affects me most is that we at TLMP [tlm-project.org] get a large portion of our traffic for Linux ISO torrents from SuprNova's listings.

Anyway, there are other sites, and much like when SR was taken down a couple of years ago, one of them will likely take the traffic and fill the void. Where there is demand, there is supply.

Anyone have any more information as to why this happened? Is it anything to do with the developement of Exeem? I can't see it being as simple as the MPAA taking legal action, as AFAIK they have little influence in Slovenia where it is hosted, and they have whethered alot of copyright group's actions fine until now....

For starters, "sloncek"'s identity was essentially revealed by the Slovakian magazine Mladina [mladina.si].

It gave his initials (A and P), the high school he went to (which meant which town he lived in), and basically everything short of an online map to his house. In a small country like Slovenia, if the authorities know who the culprit is, it's very easy for them to put some pressure on "sloncek" to make him go away so that little Slovenia won't be declared a member of the Axis of Evil. I doubt that sloncek is going to jail, but he might have decided that cooperating is better than having his life made hell for the next few years like DVD Jon.

A big point many people miss -- trackers are what keep the torrents together. Indexers like SuprNova, although highly popular, do nothing but point people where to go.

It's like asking a bartender about the street corners where the girls hang out late at night. If he responsible for how you use the information; ie, if you engage in prostition?

The big point that you are missing (and most people running torrent trackers) is that if you have a reasonable suspicion that the information you are providing to someone is going to be used for criminal purposes then you are treading dangerously close to the definition of "conspiracy".

Let's take your example of the helpful bartender a bit further. You wander into a bar and over several drinks proceed to tell the bartender about your sleazy business partner and how he is cheating you. The bartender tells you that "he knows a guy" who can take care of your problem for a bundle of cash. You take the number he gives you, meet with a contract hit man, and pay him a wad on money so that your business partner meets a rather violent demise.

Is the bartender a participant in your conspiracy to commit murder? According to the law he is. A reasonalbe person would have no problem conecting the dots here and information that was provided had a purpose...

To drag this back in to the real world, you might want to take a look at how the law deals with flea markets and swap meets where counterfeit goods are being sold. The person organizing the swap meet can post as many signs as they want saying that they have no idea what you are selling and are only providing a place for people to put their goods on display, but the law treats that claim like the BS it truly is. The people running the torrent trackers know what is being provided and what their role in the game is, and if they try to claim that they are shocked that people are trading pirated music, software, and videos on these services they will be bitch-slapped by the law.

Murder, contract killers, I'm surprised terrorists and children in peril didn't make the analogy. How about something a bit more realistic? The bartender tells a patron who wants to go fishing the location of the nearest sporting goods store. The patron uses the fishing gear purchased out of season. The bartender knew it wasn't fishing season when providing the directions. No murders, no money changing hand with the bartender, no quantifiable loss, just breaking a law intended to preserve a resource. Is the bartender guilty of conspiracy? Only in a sense worthy of a Victor Hugo novel, a reasonable person would not connect the dots. In a civilized, humane society the patron bears full responsibility for the act, which is at best a misdemeanour and a small fine.

As a counter example - read the yellow pages in any major city in America. Look up "escort services" -- typically you will find multiple pages of listings. It has been this way for at least twenty years (that's when, I as a horny teen, ordered my first call girl on a trip to the big city) and probably a whole lot longer than that.

As escorts are just another name for prostitutes, that would make the yellow pages of every major metropolitan area guilty of conspiracy for solicitation. Yet, these ads continue to run and the yellow pages publishers seem to be completely unmolested by the legal system for their part in it all.

Now, you can't quite download a hooker via bittorrent, but I think the analogy between the call girls in the yellow pages and suprnova is a lot closer than the analogy between the bartender's hitman and suprnova.

You take the number he gives you, meet with a contract hit man, and pay him a wad on money so that your business partner meets a rather violent demise.

Or, to use a probably more accurate analogy... when my friend wanted to shoot spit wads during english class, I lent him a pen to bore out for a spit-tube... and damn! We both totally got busted for detention!!

You can always push this concept to whatever level you want. Should the alcohol companies or firearms manufacturers be considered co-conspirators? Should your ISP be liable? Should the government be liable for information that traverses the ether since they tax it and are therefore "involved"? Should the U.S. military be liable for "incidental deaths" in Iraq?

The reality is that the one with the biggest stick makes the rules. Those of us with the little sticks have to be far more clever which isn't that hard when it comes to competing with governments and large corporations.

People, please stop posting links to your favorite torrent site that is still up and kicking. They are already under tremendous pressure right now, and I don't want them to have any more attension brought to them. Those that are interested can find the sites themselves, so please, help save the few that are left and stop posting links.

People find resources they need through web links. People advertise the resources they have, or like, through web links. Especially if there is a need needing filling, like there seems to be now. "Find the sites themselves" how, without weblinks? I'd like to see a search engine that does a good job indexing sites that no one links to! I'd like to see a web browser that automagically knows about unlinked sites, no matter how perfectly they may match the needs of whoever is doing the surfing.

There is no point in having a web site that no one links to, because no one will ever go there. Furthermore, if people like a particular site, they tend to talk about it, and link to it. That's just the way the net is.

In other words, you're advocating doing something that makes it IMPOSSIBLE to do the other thing you're advocating doing.

this is the same sort of thing that happened with the original Napster. Any sort of centralization is going to become an immediate target for MPAA/RIAA legal action. At least with BitTorrent there can be other sources for.torrent files, but so long as they can shut down any large repositories like suprnova.org, finding files will be too cumbersome for all but the most determined users.

DC++ seems to have the same weakness, with the hosts, but as long as host lists are legal, it will remain pretty easy to find new hosts. Gnutella seems pretty safe, but they've managed to pollute the network enough to make it almost unusable.

alas, it is only a matter of time before something comes along that perfects this problem and leaves the MPAA/RIAA with no option but to come up with a new business model. Free music seems to me to be a fine way to advertise a touring artist who is making money off of the shows. Movies may have to resort to product placement, or something.

1. Forget chasing 'pirates'. This will save a lot of expensive legal bills. Cut back drastically on advertising too, as you don't need to whip people up into a frenzy to get them to theatres in the first week.
2. Make film (Citizen Kane: starring Adam Sandler or something).
3. Make a VCD cut and make unlabelled cheapo vcd's. Using the economies of scale, sell these so cheap that the guys selling pirate vcd will buy from you rather than burn their own copies. Your margin is the difference between a bulk pressed cd and a small scale burned copy.
4. Simultaneously sell the film as a download for the same price as you get for the vcd....wait a few weeks
5. Make a nicer, longer dvd cut of the film and, again, sell these so cheap that the guys selling pirate dvd will buy from you rather than burn their own copies.
6. Sell the dvd cut of the film online at the same price as the DVD wholesale price..... wait some more
7. Theatre release of film in lovely THX/35mm
8. Boxed set dvd release with extra everything.

By doing this you make money from the guys currently selling 'pirated copies' of films and money from people who can't be bothered to find a torrent of your film. The money saved on lawyers and advertising would probably pay for setting up the servers.

At stage 3 you are the sole supplier of vcd of your film, it is uneconomic to burn copies so you own the market. People may share your film over the internet but the hassle of finding a torrent and/or running P2P software is competing against the paid download (4) which is priced as low as a blank cdr.

This is simple economics. Cut back on expensive things like lawyers and advertising, then put out bargain bin priced product to soak up the sales to misers and the poor. You can still make bigger margins on the nicely packaged versions to people who want to buy them.

You're missing the idea behind cost of production and supply/demand. Hollywood filmmakers will NEVER be able to sell as cheap as pirates for the simple reason the pirates do not pay anything for the material. Making movies is a costly venture, advertising or no advertising, lawyers or no lawyers.

While I do agree Hollywood is approaching this the wrong way, your idea is fundamentally flawed. Besides, this has nothing to do with cost of production--this is simply supply/demand economics. The market will set the price, and right now it has done so very efficiently for DVDs. Hollywood needs to embrace the Internet, not implement artificial methods of stopping Internet piracy--remove the demand for pirated movies, not the supply.

I have a better idea... Charge me once for the content. Most software has an "upgrade" policy. They don't reward people for doing business with them. They try to screw you every way possible, and expect you to play nice. Let them clean up their act first before they go after people not playing fair with them. I just can't find it in my heart to feal any pitty for the "plight" of anyone working in or for the MPAA.

1) They lobbey the government into outlawing things that the average person wouldn't agr

Several bittorrent sites that I use have gone dead. The ones I miss the most are torrentbits and delirium vault.

People have said that these sites are closing voluntarily before they get raided. The site owners seem to have solid information about the raids. I doubt they'd close down without it.

The best community sites kept track of ratios to encourage people to upload. Suprnova didn't, but torrentbits did. Unfortunately, that means that the sites maintained databases of everything users downloaded.

Without those databases, the MPAA would have to join swarms and try to collect as many IPs as possible. With such a database, they could look up everything everyone had downloaded through that site.

So it was a very good thing that the site admins pulled the plug on those sites before the databases could be seized.

It seems likely to me that the old model of the bittorrent community site, which depended on such databases, is dead.

Perhaps some old cypherpunks could come up with a better way to incentivize users to share and participate in the community, without leaving data behind in a database. Maybe something with blind signatures, similar to a digital cash protocol.

People have said that these sites are closing voluntarily before they get raided. The site owners seem to have solid information about the raids. I doubt they'd close down without it.

The best community sites kept track of ratios to encourage people to upload. Suprnova didn't, but torrentbits did. Unfortunately, that means that the sites maintained databases of everything users downloaded.

Without those databases, the MPAA would have to join swarms and try to collect as many IPs as possible. With such a database, they could look up everything everyone had downloaded through that site.

Yes Torrentbits has detailed records of user accounts - what they've uploaded, and what they've downloaded.

But...Your IP is only attached to that user account on a temporary basis. As soon as you stop seeding or leeching a Torrentbit torrent they no longer have a record of your IP.

If the **AA wants to collect your IP address they simply have to join the swarm. Getting their hands on Torrentbits records will in no way aid them in their attemps to collect IP addresses.

Perhaps some old cypherpunks could come up with a better way to incentivize users to share and participate in the community, without leaving data behind in a database. Maybe something with blind signatures, similar to a digital cash protocol.

Most large tracker sites have long abandoned the pratice of tracking their users via IP address. Many sites now attach a "key" to every.torrent downloaded from their tracker. They use this key to relate a peer with an authorized user in their database.So there is info in their database, but nothing that can be used to attach any particular user with their real-life self.

These sites really had it coming, frankly. While I'm concerned about corporate power, and less than thrilled with the modern media, they weren't trying to do anything about that - they were just plain illegal. Not in a recent way, either - they were ignoring the same copyright laws that protect the software I write, and the GPL so many here are so fond of.

I'd find it far easier to understand a site that restricted its self to things not otherwise availible than sites like these that appear to have no problem with full scale piracy. Yes, I realise that would still be illegal - but IMO rather less offensive.

I used to be a bit more sympathetic to this stuff, but I know too many people who view it as their RIGHT to access other people's work for free, without their permission. I guess its just another version of the "information wants to be free" zealotry (Free Software bigots who don't actually understand free software and usually hypocrites. The few, very loud ones that give the whole community a bad name to some.).

I wouldn't automatically assume it was the fault of one of the recording industry groups... it may be that suprnova.org simply couldn't afford their bandwidth costs any more. But until we hear more from the owners, we're all just guessing as to the cause.

That is all that Suprnova ever did. Now, if its illegal to post a list of files, it must also be illegal to print one in a newspaper, or write one on a piece of paper with a pencil anad photocopy it.

If you go a google search for "index of" apache *.dmg* "port 80" [google.co.uk] you get lots and lots of links to copyrighted software. By your flawed logic, Google "is just plain illegal" because it provides lists of files just as Supernova did.

Printing a list can never be an illegal act. At least not in a free country it cant.

I find it hard to believe that they would not have issued warnings or other things of that nature if the issue was that bandwidth and all of that was becoming too expensive. Suprnova was incredibly popular with teh torrent community and they had to know that people would come to their aid.

I think it is possible that Suprnova and a number of these other sites reached an agreement with the MPAA or whoever was threating to sue them that they just disappear quiety into the night and they can save them self from a lawsuit.

It strikes me as odd that they would not heve mentioned it, but I can easily see the reason for this. If your the MPAA you have two options, either make an example of these sites so people are too scared to fuck with them, or just make them go bye bye. I think the first won't discourage enough people, because the law is on suprnova's side, so a number of people would rise up just to defy the MPAA and take up the cause. However, if the MPAA were to tell suprnova that in order to avoid a lawsuit they need to tell people that the site was just too much work, it prevents them from being martyrs and other people won't be so quick to jump in and fill the vacum left.

Man, I'm so unbelievably relieved that you guys are listing off virtually every torrent site in existence. Since obviously nobody at the MPAA would ever think to read Slashdot, it's totally obvious that you should post more torrent sites, including a mirror of one site that was apparently just forced to shut down. No need to be covert here!!

Are you under the illusion that the MPAA would not already know about these sites? I mean, you reckon they don't have google or are you thinking the don't have an internet connection?
Maybe they work from a dail-up connection and don't get to check out any forums?
A bit more respect for the powers of the dark side might suit you well

I forsee a simple program (could even just be a perl script) that does a google search for.torrents, and eliminates those that give 404 before presenting the list. It won't find as big a list, since it'll only get long-lived seeds, but that shouldn't really be too big a hindrance...

It actually works quite well. Be sure to play with the options, the default timeout is set to one second (because when your searching ~50 links one second takes a long time) and may reject valid torrents.

The program is witten in C# and the binaries and source are included. If you get an error when you run it you need the.NET Framework (link above).

Also, for the love of god, be very gentle. My machine is very old and it's connection very poor.

BitTorrent is a great technology, and it has sped up many Linux ISO downloads I've had in the past. However, I think it is so funny the way people freak out over stuff like suprnova closing. "Where are we supposed to get our MP3s and warez now?!!"

I NEVER hear anything about usenet, and there are hundreds of gigabytes of stuff posted every single day. Nearly my entire MP3 and digital video collection (and actually just about everything else) has come from usenet. I don't understand why this seems to still be the great untapped resource? Especially nowadays with services like newzbin.com, it makes finding and downloading from usenet a real snap!

Just the other day I introduced my brother to usenet, and he couldn't believe what he had been missing for so long.

So if you really want torrents to continue being available on the internet, and in general any kind of p2p activity to be available on the internet for US customers - then the following must happen.

1) You need to get some gold for your own lawyers. That is just the fact of the matter. It sure is nice to get all this free stuff, but as they say - there is no free lunch.

2) You need to get some gold for your lobbiest to the congress critters. They only know what the MPAA/RIAA mouths tell them. A politician basically knows only how to get elected, otherwise they would be doing something else.

3) You need to get politically motivated. You need that political organization named above. You need your own moveon.org to keep the membership active in letter/fax/email writing and informative campaigns.

Play time on the internet is over. It is time to grow up and realize politics, government, and all that corruption is part of the game now.

This is why when all else fails, I turn to the alt.binaries groups to find my VCDs, SVCDs, etc. Use an excellent free news reader like XNews [newsguy.com], browse to alt.binaries and then filter the groups based on your keyword ("enterprise" or "simpsons" or whatever). Many of the most popular shows have their own groups. And even the less popular show up in alt.binaries.vcd, alt.binaries.svcd, etc.

Apparently the RIAA has been sampling the swarms or getting their data from somewhere like that. This torrent was gotten from Suprnova... was that "paper" we saw the other day here on slashdot linked to any data they collected that the RIAA might have dipped into?

I had a friend who was sent one of these notices after he downloaded a show from suprnova. Fortunately in Canada the notices don't mean jack because the ISPs aren't permitted to (or aren't willing to) turn over subscriber information without a court order. In fact several of the big high-speed ISPs went to court against the RIAA to fight this. It's nice having your ISP in your corner even if it's mutual self-interest rather than the big guy looking out for the little guy.

Yes, the MPAA is acting on behalf of its members and copyright holders, ensuring that intellectual property is not distributed for free. They have the law on their side, and can probably buy or lobby anyone of importance that disagrees with them.

That said, I think the MPAA is fighting a losing battle. People like to share, to spread what little wealth and happiness they have around.

BitTorrent enables a system where people of like interests and hobbies can reward one another as they are connected to the same torrent. And yes, this includes both legitimate and illegitimate uses.

Sharing is part of human nature and any organization that throws its weight around in an attempt to circumvent our instinct to share will ultimately prove to be futile.

I think those organizations shutting down these sites just started to initiate the next generation of decentralized P2P clients... That's usually the only thing they do, help speed up the next generation of file sharing software, more clever than the last time. It usually doesn't happen if not a great deal of sites are taken down, since then there's not as much need to advance technology.

I wonder if FreeNet might be a good source for torrents. It's hella slow, but you only need 35K or so downloaded before you can go off and connect to the torrent.

The problem is that everyone's exposed at that point: all the MPAA has to do is connect to the torrent with Azureus and they'll see all the IPs that are currently attached.

It is my life's mission to produce an unbreakable, fast form of BitTorrent: the Copyright Cartel shut off my Internet for a day earlier this week. There's nothing I can do to fix the law (which stated that copyrights were to promote the arts and sciences and should only run for 20 years); it's horribly broken and things that are currently under copyright protection will never leave copyright protection, due to continual extensions. This is abysmal; Disney made much of their money from re-doing old stories that fell into the Public Domain, like Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, etc.; today that would be impossible.

Anybody developing newer versions with encryption and anonymity, feel free to contact me. I have both developer time (C, C++, HTML, Perl, Javascript, etc.) and disposable income, to support creating a new version.

I wonder if FreeNet might be a good source for torrents. It's hella slow, but you only need 35K or so downloaded before you can go off and connect to the torrent.

It's been a while since I last checked out Freenet. If I remember right, you mirror content without knowing what that content is When I last checked out Freenet (years ago), I was shocked by the amount of child porn that was available, and I was doubly shocked at the small amount of useful information on Freenet.

If I use Freenet to download a movie, will I also be hosting child porn? With Bittorrent and eDonkey, I have a choice of what content I distribute.

Look, I can't take such a neutral stance in regards to child exploitation. I don't agree with Freenet's statement, and I won't participate. Child porn is exploits and harms innocent children. Dismissing child porn as a simple "freedom of speech" it completely ignores rights of the victim. Child pornographers should to be burned alive.

If someone drugged you, raped you, took pictures of the rape, do they automatically have the right to put distribute those photos on the Internet? What about your rights?

To paraphrase an old expert's opinion, while not even being an expert: it depends

In a digital network, you either have a central authority able to control all data flow or you have none. There is no middle ground, I fear. So you either have a "watchful eye", if I might call it that, above you, screening all your traffic. Or you don't.

If you accept a central authority, no problem. But remember, they can check you silently and must do so everytime you say, send or receive anything through the net. They will need to monitor your opinion, your preferences, your private and casual conversations and worse.

What makes this central network authority a prime target for bribery and despotism. Like the police today. Anyone, even law enforcement officers, have their price and/or can fail in their morale. While a police investigation leaves a paper trail, has multiple officers involved and has an electable politician or sheriff behind it, network auditing has not. Criminal investigation usually happens after a crime was committed and affects those related to a crime, but scene network screening has to run regularly and affects everyone. On one hand they need to have proof to convict you, on the other the proof is a set of bytes with no identifying properties.

Short: anti-authoritarian movements can be tracked, silenced and imprisoned more easily if you have a central authority scanning traffic.

The main goal of Freenet is to prevent usurpation of power by the executive branch. Those in power will always reject dissent and sooner or later try to use a subverted law against true freedom of speech.

In my own humble opinion I can say freedom all is a higher goal than protection of few children. Now mod me down, flame me to oblivion, whatever you like. Call me stone-hearted if you like, but if I must choose between truly free speech, truly anonymous and open or prevention of children's suffering, I chose the first.

Dictatorship in one country hurts more children than all molesters can do worldwide. Preventing dictatorship is the best way to help and care for all children. Chasing molesters only helps a few.

And I will not let my emotion for hopeless underage victims overwhelm my rational thoughts. I will not trade "a good thing" for "no bad thing" as this will lead me nowhere. And I will never ever become a tool of population control, spreading memes of fear and scare for a threat that is perceived way out of proportion if you look closely.

But if a few children are being exploited, does this mean you have a free society at all?

Yes. Do you think that a "free society" means everybody is safe and happy? No. That's not what a free society is. A free society is one where you can succeed or screw up on your own, where the Man doesn't force you down 'cause there is no Man.

There is no such place as Utopia. Some people will always be fated to suffer, but, in a free society, most people have every chance to make their own destiny. A free society is as close to Utopia as we can get.

"If someone drugged you, raped you, took pictures of the rape, do they automatically have the right to put distribute those photos on the Internet? What about your rights?"

You're conflating two unrelated ideas. If someone drugged me and raped me, they've already broken the law, and ought to be arrested, tried, and put into prison. The photos are a non-issue.

People are allowed to take photographs, even of bad things. Photojournalists are allowed to take photos of people comitting crimes. It's important to not confuse the issue of what the real crime in your example is. The crime is the drugging and the rape, not taking a photo.

A photograph is a record of an event, just like a written story, or even an orally told story. If you're suggesting that photographing crimes is wrong, you're also strongly suggesting that writing about them or even talking about them is wrong. Is that really the position you want to take?

Better to try convincing them now than after you're facing a civil trial.

Rather than threaten him, why don't you sit back for a moment and consider that it's exactly what he's doing?

Convince other Americans that the Public Domain is a Good Thing.

Good advice, but the best way to do this is through demonstration...not rhetoric.

You *can* do something about the law...Run for office if you have to.

"Going through the system" is almost impossible under the current regime. The people who run the system get their paycheck from folks like the MPAA, they have specifically designed 'the system' in such a way that folks like you and me have a snowballs chance in hell of getting anything changed.

What he's doing is real change, not imagined or self-righteous change. It takes courage, and self-belief. Let your government bully you if you prefer, let everyone wave the word 'law' around like it's a word from god, but don't try and convert him for our sake. We need more people like him.

It took Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to make real change then. It takes the same two types of people to make real change now.

"When patience has begotten false estimates of its motives, when wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality." --Thomas Jefferson

And then they fuck people over by removing my only way of watching it before it comes to DVD?

WTF? I do feel your pain (well, I could have, if I were the least interested in Star Trek), but you're not being "fucked over".

You'll just have to wait until you can watch it legally. I.e. when a TV station you have access to broadcasts it, or when you can buy the DVD. Tough shit.

You have no right to download stuff (or more precisely, in more civilised non-DMCA-afflicted countries, people have no right to illegally distribute stuff) just because it's not yet available legally where you happen to live.

Some retard modded your post "insightful". I think it could possibly be "informative" or "interesting", since despite your confused outlook you provided an example of yet another effect of the anti-piracy crusade.

You have no right to download stuff (or more precisely, in more civilised non-DMCA-afflicted countries, people have no right to illegally distribute stuff) just because it's not yet available legally where you happen to live.

Maybe this is a troll, but I'll bite anyway. You have a right to do anything that does not harm another. Since they are not even trying to get his money for the show, there's no basis whatever for any claims of monetary losses. The author gains nothing by keeping his work from others, so disseminating it cannot be said to harm him. There is nothing whatsoever immoral about violating copyright in those circumstances. It is enforcement of copyright that is immoral.

"You have a right to do anything that does not harm another. Since they are not even trying to get his money for the show, there's no basis whatever for any claims of monetary losses. The author gains nothing by keeping his work from others, so disseminating it cannot be said to harm him."

Look, I'm no Nazi when it comes to the occasional IP theft. I have been known to use p2p apps from time to time; but what you just wrote is false. When you pirate a copy of something, even when the creator has no plans to try and sell it to you, you're still harming him by eroding his ability to control the distribution of his own work. That's a very important thing in the eyes of musicians, writers and filmmakers.

Also, your assertion that the author is not losing money due to your theft is lost if you consider the fact that he might choose to market his creation to your area at a future time. He has lost potential income, even if it's years before he decides to take action on it.

Like I said, I'm not trying to be self-righteous on this as I've done my own share of downloading, but people who think p2p downloading of things is a purely correct thing to do really need to think about what they're doing a little more.

They are *broadcasting* it in the first place. If they want to control the distribution, they're going to have to use a system where it is possible to control it, instead of blaring it across the airwaves for all takers.

"Maybe this is a troll, but I'll bite anyway. You have a right to do anything that does not harm another. Since they are not even trying to get his money for the show, there's no basis whatever for any claims of monetary losses. The author gains nothing by keeping his work from others, so disseminating it cannot be said to harm him."

Nonetheless, the person who owns the copyright has the exclusive right to choose how it's copied. Whether you think they're making the right choice, or whether you think that they'd agree with your decision, or whether you think that they'll suffer no monetary loss makes no difference. It's their right, not yours.

The balance here, of course, is that anybody can create something and copyright. If you don't like what somebody does with their own intellectual property, you are completely free to release your own under the terms you choose.

It starts with a "U" and rhymes with "BLUESNET".;-) Seriously, *everything* gets posted there a day or two after it's released. Just follow the white rabbit to a big premium news server provider and download anything you want without the possibility of the MPAA or RIAA ever seeing your IP.

As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United Statesof America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe.Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here.For your information, no Swedish law is being violated.

Please be assured that any further contact with us, regardless of medium,will result ina) a suit being filed for harassmentb) a formal complaint lodged with the bar of your legal counsel, forsending frivolous legal threats.

It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are fucking morons, andthat you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons.

Please also note that your e-mail and letter will be published in full onhttp://www.thepiratebay.org.

I think they are getting way too many members to cope with at the moment (with TB and suprnova going down). They got about 15,000 in 12 hours (went from 140,000 last night to 155,000 this morning when I checked).

This is going to be a huge issue for all the new/small torrents sites - how do they work with the load that millions of new users demand?

BTW: If you have an IRC client, you can join #bt, #bt-gm and #tvtorrents on efnet. #bt and #tvtorrents serves TV show torrents and #bt-gm serves torrents for games and movies.

I think they are getting way too many members to cope with at the moment (with TB and suprnova going down).

The only way these sites will be able to remain online is to host them on servers out of European and American jurisdiction.

I'm a system administrator here in Saint Petersburg, Russia for an ISP that I'm a founding member of (even though I'm not Russian). I've got oodles of bandwidth, and would love to host a popular torrent site (especially because I rely on these torrents to escape from having to watch Russian television).

Is anyone interested in teaming up with me so we can get the torrents back on the web without legal worry?

You can find me here (sale [AT] winlink.ru)

p.s. to all the mods that are going to mod me into oblivian, think of this: the whole idea here is to keep the torrents alive. Isn't that what we all want?

Speaking as a Russian, I can at least verify that this man is sane and in full possession of his faculties. Russian TV is just about the most horrid and bleak torrent of dementia ever to spring from the mind of man.

" All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest &#169; 1997-2004 OSTG."

Seems pretty clear to me that Slashdot absolves itself of responsibility, especially with them not deleting comments, and letting the community moderate posts (specifically mentioned in the 'comments might be moderated' caveats are Illegal comments).

Sorry, no. Slashdot tried to fight the scientologists [wired.com], and found out Real Fast (TM) just how far that disclaimer's protection actually extended. The answer is "not very, even for documents arguably in the public domain".

Slashdot caved; that doesn't mean that the Scientologists were on the right side of the law.

You're right, but that's even worse. There's no real question that the scientologists weren't on the right side of the law, and they won anyway. In giving them the victory, the editors showed that contrary to their disclaimer, they do exercise full editorial discretion over the content of the site. That makes them fully liable for any illegal solicitation which they allow to remain visible.

Which is the weakest link in the entire concept of a law-based society. And it is one of the major contributing factors to the inequality among citizens based on level of income and wealth. A rich football player can get away with murder and mayhem, but a public forum can't discuss an obviously phildickian "religious" organization without being threatened with eternal litigation, which is a lot worse on a practical level than eternal damnation...

The slashdot editors took down the post and instead posted a long rant about Scientology's threat to free speech and liberty, complete with links to exposes of the church as well as links that would get you to the information that was originally taken down. It was a rather ingenious strategy, actually; they complied with the letter of Scientology's legal request while at the same time drawing way more attention to the material they took down (as well as creating an open forum for attacks on the church in the discussion). IIRC, the material that had originally been taken down was posted again to the followup discussion.

For the record, BitTorrent *sucks* as a media distribution model. It only works for "popular" data, which results in an ever-worsening spiral downward into The Land Of FOX. Once the torrent dies, dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people are left with incomplete and useless files.

First off, ed2k links and torrent files are both essentially hashes - you're no more in the clear hosting one than the other. The actual tracker mechanism does possibly leave you open to greater legal attack, but often times the torrents and tracker are hosted in seperate locations.

Secondly, ed2k isn't slow because of the protocol itself so much as the queueing system. With ed2k you *will* spend most of your time simply waiting to download a file. When I used it regularly, I found that you generally had to have at least 20-30 things queued up to have *something* downloading at all time. ed2k is great for finding older or obscure files, but I wouldn't call it a replacement for the pure power that a torrent leverages.

That article mentions part of the problem is that internet access is going so fast now that larger movie files can easily be downloaded...maybe that means the MPAA can do something right that the RIAA didn't -- and that is to EMBRACE the new technology. Set up an online movie store where, for a small price (small because they don't have packaging fees and such), one can download a DVD -- legit.

Since DVDs are so easy to copy now anyways, there's no argument that it would make things easier to copy. So wh

Don't have to go quite that far.... in Canada, there is no DMCA, and all of the attempts to create something like it have failed. Even if there was one, parliament has ruled that there is no grounds for passing a law against downloading files of any nature.

Serving up copywritten material is still illegal, but as I understand it, BitTorrent is completely decentralized peer2peer, and the host websites don't actually host any copywritten material, no?

Seriously, can we let the lawyers find out about The-Next-Best-Thing(tm) on their own. Do we have to spoon-feed it to them and put a big bullseye on everything good?

What's the point of having a good thing if you can't tell anyone about it?

Obviously it wasn't that good if it went down with the mere threat of a raid by the authorities. It wasn't that good if the authorities in multiple countries could be talked into performing such a raid. Sites that demonstrably use Bittorrent for purely legal distribution of such files that they own the copyright to will not be going down. Your favorite Linux distro, for example, will still be available by Bittorrent most likely.

No lawyer has any legal ground to stand on to convince the authorities in France to shut down Mandrake's Bittorrent tracker, run by Mandrake and published with a link on Mandrake's own website. SuprNova and the others are going down for the same reasons the original Napster went down; because they were too centralized and operated on the fringes of legality, if not totally outside the law.

What's that old saying again? What doesn't kill an Internet technology will only make it stronger. This won't kill BT for 100% legal uses and a new decentralized P2P technology is already evolving (exeem?) to replace BT for stuff like warez that can't be shown to be 100% legal. If you try to keep things secret you just put off the inevitable. The lawyers will always find out about and attack questionably legal things eventually, that's their job. Plus, the more people you keep out with your secrecy, the worse performance you'll get from your BT downloads.

In the end, the next "working" P2P system will be that much closer to being indestructible. They certainly won't be able to take it down just by shutting down one website or writing an article about it on Slashdot. Anything that can be killed by a simple article on/. doesn't really deserve to be out there in the first place. You're just whining that you can't get to your free warez as easily as you've gotten used to. So what?

Bittorrent was never even designed to do what it has been used for by sites like SuprNova, despite how cool it may have been while it worked. The creator of Bittorrent said so himself. It was not designed to be an instructible way to exchange copyrighted data illegally without fear of reprisal. It's not Slashdot's fault that you and others decided to use it for this purpose anyway. Slashdot is really doing you a favor by hastening the evolution of the next generation P2P clients. You'll get access to your warez and old TV shows, don't you worry. It just won't be via SuprNova.org after today.

You have no defensible point and yet you were modded +5, Insightful. At least 3 mods should be ashamed today.